Candidates in Mozambique’s national elections on 1-2 December have been speaking about HIV and AIDS, particularly as the voting began on World AIDS Day.
The ruling Frelimo party candidate Armando Guebuza said that under his leadership, the country would continue his predecessor and party’s fight against HIV and AIDS.
“Frelimo will continue intensifying efforts for the prevention and combat of HIV and AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, cholera and other endemic diseases,” Guebuza told reporters.
Indeed, under Frelimo the country started the fight against the pandemic by establishing a National AIDS Council, which coordinates all activities related to AIDS, and a National AIDS Programme within the Health Ministry.
These bodies have been working closely with the civil society in disseminating information, and running awareness campaigns on AIDS.
For his part, the leader of the largest opposition Renamo party, Afonso Dhlakama, said that his government would press on the world’s richest countries to sensitise their business community to reduce the price of AIDS drugs.
“I’d personally ask the richest countries to contribute with more resources to the fight against AIDS, and crucially, I’d like them to speak to the drugs manufacturers to bring down the price of drugs. AIDS drugs are too expensive for us poor people,” he said.
The prices of AIDS drugs is an issue in the developing world which are calling for the manufacturing of generic drugs that are cheaper.
However, the major pharmaceutical firms which already dominate markets in rich countries, and claim to have made huge investments into research and development to develop new drugs, have been claiming that generic drugs violate patent laws. They have lobbied the World Trade Organisation to outlaw their production.
Dhlakama added that he would sensitise community and religious leaders who do not endorse the use of protective tools to realize that it is important that “the AIDS virus is worse than atomic bombs, so they should be courageous to advocate the use of condoms.”
Former Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi said that HIV and AIDS is a serious challenge because the pandemic has no face. “What concerns me the most is knowing that some of the would-be voters died because of AIDS and some will still die.”
He called for more efforts in the sensitising of people of the dangers the pandemic poses to the future of the country.
A medical doctor by profession, Mocumbi now chairs the supreme commission of the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership Programme, a new scheme to enable clinical trials for drugs and vaccines against HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Another voice in the fight against HIV and AIDS is that of Graça Machel, who is chaiperson of the Foundation for Community Development (FDC), a leading NGO in Mozambique.
Unfortunately the scourge affects people in a disproportionate fashion, she said, adding that the most people affected by the AIDS virus are women.
Machel’s concerns are borne out by facts: a chilling United Nations report issued before World AIDS Day says that women now account for nearly half the number of people infected with HIV worldwide.
It is in this light that Machel told SANF that she had held a meeting with political leaders to sensitise them to do more, and get them to co-operate with civil society’s efforts to fight the pandemic since “it shouldn’t be just a government’s programme, but the whole society’s programme.”
Furthermore, “the fight against AIDS should be above politics,” she said. (SARDC)
